Dignity and Purpose
by GettingOverGreta
Summary: Contains S2 spoilers. From a prompt: Molly helps Sherlock fake his death. He kills her to leave no witnesses. Needless to say, contains character death. Dark!Sherlock.


I don't believe I have ever felt so guilty about writing a story as I have about this one. Seriously I am going to go read all the fluff that has ever existed now to make myself feel better.

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><p>Sherlock had to give Molly credit, her performance over the past few days had been exceptional. She had ably concealed the lies in her autopsy report, played the grieving friend at his funeral (her love ever unrequited, and Sherlock wondered if she had realized that even if she was of some importance to him it always would be), and then she had helped him make arrangements to escape, paying the cash he provided for tickets and a false passport.<p>

This would be his last night in London for some time. Molly seemed nervous, her glance falling over him occasionally, and then looking away as if it was too much. She was concerned about him perhaps, about the dangers that would befall him. She got up to make tea, and Sherlock followed her to the kitchen. There was something poetic, he thought, about stilling her shaking hands and tipping her chin up as he kissed her. A little gasp of breath escaped her and he saw something in her eyes shift, something beyond dilated pupils and her rapid pulse. Not pure desire, but the knowledge that this was her last chance before he disappeared.

She pulled him into her bedroom, and Sherlock indulged her, she had been such a help after all. Still, he needed some strategy here, and fumblingly informing Molly that he hadn't done this before seemed to do the trick. She seemed genuinely touched, blushing even more prettily for him before she sprawled out on the bed and let him be a scientist exploring her naked form.

Her clothes really were unflattering, as it turned out, not only immature but denying what was actually a rather pleasant shape. Sherlock ran the flat of his tongue over her nipple and thought he could feel every little glabrous cell rise in the heat of his mouth. The curls between her thighs were damp when he buried his fingers there, and positively soaked by the time he plunged himself inside her, savoring each rise of Molly's hips to meet his own. Her hands tangled in his hair as she pleaded for more and deeper and harder, and Sherlock felt utterly overwhelmed by delicious heat and Molly's aching, seemingly endless need for him.

She looked beautiful afterwards, her hair was so much more aesthetically pleasing when freed of a childish ponytail and in careless disarray, her eyes bright and her cheeks rosy from pleasure and exertion.

"Shower?" Sherlock asked her, and offered her his hand to help her up. Sharing the steamy little space was slightly awkward, but Molly appeared pleased when he offered to wash her hair for her. He massaged the shampoo into her scalp, and he thought he heard a soft moan over the rush of the water.

For a strange, delirious moment he cast his eyes over the curve where her back flowed into her hips and wondered about other ways she might give her body to him, how the little sounds in her throat would sound in other rooms. But that spoke of complications he didn't need, things that could not be, if he was to succeed in his plans going forward.

He tilted her head back to begin the process of rinsing out the shampoo. Then with a simple twist, he snapped her neck, catching her before she crumbled to the floor, her life suddenly snatched away from her.

This was a good death for Molly, he thought. She had been unafraid and blissfully happy. There was no ugliness to it, no marring of her beauty. He didn't know why he felt compelled to cradle her head in the shower as he washed away evidence of their liaison. Or why he decided that he should dress her properly when he laid her in the bed again afterwards. He chose a plain nightdress with embroidery around the edges. Simple, delicate, like Molly. He folded her hands neatly over her chest and thought she looked lovely, her soft brown hair flowing over her shoulders. He knew what he would have said, if he was deducing the scene, but he could not imagine that it could be true, that Molly could mean something to him and yet he could have destroyed her this way.

But then he destroyed her all the time, this was probably the first time he had provided Molly with dignity and purpose instead of humiliation, intended or not.

He completed cleaning the bedroom to remove traces of himself, then placed the rest of his evidence that he had stolen from Moriarty's autopsy. Sherlock had made excuses to her for the theft at the time and she had been so busy that she had overlooked it. But then he supposed she would have overlooked it anyway, her foolishly placed trust in him remaining permanently evident. A few hairs to place among the sheets, skin scrapings carefully placed beneath Molly's fingernails. In a way it would be a hint to those who remained. If Moriarty could seemingly murder Molly from beyond the grave, then Sherlock too could return someday.

Best of all, it would be a mystery only Sherlock Holmes could solve, and he would have all the time in the world to think of a solution where he was not implicated. Perhaps he wouldn't, and her death would just add to his mystique. His cheekbones and his collar turned up, forever haunted because the murder he could not explain was that of a young woman who had been so loyal to him. People could fill in their own blanks - they usually did. Molly had always wanted to please him, surely even she would realize that she could not have done better than this.

He bent and kissed the top of Molly's cool head and picked up Toby, leaving him in the corridor. Murder was unseemly but he drew the line at Molly's body being mutilated by a starved cat. He stepped into the street, finally free of every tie to his old life, and ready to destroy what was left of Moriarty's web.


End file.
